The River Wild

by Denis O'Neill

  “Yeah … nobody else.”

  Gail’s hands were working overtime, practically burying Roarke’s head in her lap. Roarke was sobbing now, partly in sympathy with his mother’s sorrow, partly because Deke’s confession was so inhumanly cavalier. For Gail, helplessness was not a feeling she often encountered, which made it all the more debilitating. Deke left the blade under Tom’s chin, then reached over and ran a finger along Gail’s cheek. He looked into her eyes. Then he leaned in and kissed her lips. Gail recoiled, disgusted.

  “You fuck!” Tom pushed against the blade, drawing his own blood.

  Deke stared him in the eyes. “The deal is this: you get us down the river to the takeout, and we all go home.”

  Tom and Gail exchanged a doubtful look.

  “And by my calculation,” Deke continued, “that ought to happen sometime day after tomorrow.”

  “It’s at least three days from here,” Gail said, “unless you row straight out.”

  “Fine by me,” Deke told her. “I don’t mind taking a little more time. Give anybody chasing us a little more time to give up chasing us.” He stood and stretched. “It’s true what they say about being in the outdoors. Kinda sucks the energy out of you. I’m going to bed. Terry, you got the first watch. Shoot him if he moves. He’s no good to us, anyway. Her you got to take care of, least till she gets us past the rapids.” He gestured to Tom, Gail, and Roarke. “Thank y’all for an adventurous day on the river.” Then he walked to his tent, his swagger reflecting a man in control once more.

  ** ** **

  Roarke couldn’t sleep. He was alone in the family tent. He wrestled with what had happened and wondered if there was anything he could do. He groped in the dark for his sneaker and retrieved the knife his father had given him at Hot Springs. He opened the main blade and touched it to his thumb, drawing a bead of blood. He sucked the blood dry and returned the knife to his sneaker. It made him feel empowered.

  Tom and Gail were tied into their sleeping bags close by the campfire. Terry sat against a log, his legs snugged in his own sleeping bag, .22 in hand, struggling to stay awake. Behind him a pair of eyes appeared in the dark underbrush. Looking. Moving. Peering. A low rustling sound accompanied each shifting of the eyes. When it was joined by the sound of a stick snapping, Terry’s eyes widened. He swung the gun in the direction of the noise. He stared hard into the darkness, trying to make out specific movement. It was all a black, shapeless blur. The rustling sound emerged from another location, yards away. Terry got on his knees and aimed his weapon in the direction of the noise. He was scared. His breathing sped up. When he detected movement and the rustling crackled from another location he swung his gun and fired. The noise filled the darkness with the power of a thunderclap. The next sound was barking … followed by a continuous rustling that faded as it feathered into the distance.

  The shot awakened Tom and Gail. Tom sat upright with difficulty … the crisscross of binding ropes holding him like Gulliver. He heard a final bark. “Go on, Maggie! Get out of here,” he shouted into the night.

  Roarke’s voice floated out of the tent. “Mags okay, Pop?”

  “I think so,” he shouted at the tent.

  Deke emerged from his tent. He looked around suspiciously before walking up to Terry. “The hell’s going on?”

  “Thought it was a bear,” Terry told him.

  Maggie whined and whimpered somewhere in the darkness. Deke pinned Terry with a look of disgust. “It’s a fucking dog, okay? Jesus. You’d probably shoot your own damn foot if it moved in the dark.”

  “You know I don’t like bears.”

  Deke leaned closer. “So save the ammunition for the bears … though a .22’s going to piss him off more than hurt him.”

  Terry looked at the canyon wall across the river, up at the surrounding forest. “I don’t like these woods, Deke.”

  “One more night after this. That’s all. Chrissake, don’t shoot any trees,” he gave Terry a look, “unless they shoot first.”

  He aimed a finger gun at Terry, mouthed, Pow. Then he stalked back to his tent and climbed in.

  ** ** **

  First light angled into the canyon, giving the air a chalky look. The river flowed clear over a gravel bar. A trout rose to take a mayfly, leaving a small, expanding ring on the gray-green surface. Downriver, a raccoon peered into a small pool formed by the log he was perched on. He darted his paw, lost his grip on the log, and fell into the pool. A small trout skittered away into shallow water, rippling the water. The raccoon splashed after it, driving the fish up onto the shore, where it flopped once or twice before the raccoon pinned it with its paws, clamped it in his jaws, and waddled off to have breakfast. High on the granite cliff above the pool, a hawk swooped into a ledge nest carrying a still-struggling ground squirrel in its talons. She settled her wings around her body and looked around for a moment as the rodent tried to squirm free. Then she began tearing the animal apart with her dagger-pointed beak.

  17

  Lieutenant Long’s “ranchette” was not a modern concoction, though the result was similar to what was found in the new subdivisions: a modest, log cabin ranch house with a few small, outer barns set on twenty acres. He had bought the property twenty years earlier from a rich Easterner who loved Montana in the summer and bought a twenty-thousand-acre spread with a trout-rich spring creek for his “little piece of heaven,” as he called the property. He had met Bobby back in his rodeo days, at the Last Chance Stampede and Fair at the Lewis and Clark County Fairgrounds in Helena where Bobby won $500 for snagging the Best All-Around-Cowboy award. The Easterner introduced himself to Bobby, then Bobby to his ranch, and sold him twenty acres to be a “ranch manager” when he was around, basically a grandiose title with little responsibility except to train a handful of horses that could be ridden by kids and grandkids. The price was the $500 Bobby had won—a profitable parlay if ever there was one.

  Bobby sat on the weathered wood fence, eating breakfast out of a Styrofoam container, watching Marlene, his quarter horse, keep pace with a State Police vehicle making its way slowly down the dirt-and-gravel entrance road.

  Trooper Billy Heston parked the car next to the lieutenant and got out. Marlene trotted up, curious, making it a threesome. “Nothing unusual at Hot Springs Campground,” Billy said. “I showed the pictures around.”

  “Guess it’d be a little much to expect them to sign in and reserve a camp site.”

  Billy rubbed Marlene’s head. “How you doin’, Marlene?”

  “Best damn horse you ever seen,” Bobby Long said, with as much pride in the rhyme he trotted out with the regularity of a coo-coo clock as in the actual animal. He lifted a forkful of potatoes out of the Styrofoam container. “Twenty-five years that diner’s been making home fries, and for twenty-five years they haven’t got ‘em right. Crunchy … goddamn things are supposed to be crunchy on the outside. Soft on the inside, crunchy out.” He shook his head sadly. Sighed. “Don’t ask me why I keep buying ‘em and expect something different. I think it’s a variation on the insanity definition, home fries division.” He offered Marlene a bite. The horse refused. The lieutenant shrugged and shoveled the spuds into his own mouth. “Horse’s got more sense than I do. We are creatures of habit, son. All of us. And the more I can figure out that guy Deke’s habits, the better I like our chances of catching the son of a bitch.”

  “Maybe we should send someone down the river,” the young trooper suggested.

  “And do what? Tell us bears shit in the woods? We need a break’s what we need. Something. Let’s hope it ain’t another body …” A look, “Though that might help.”

  ** ** **

  The interior of the ranch house was dark and cluttered. White chinking between the log walls kept it relatively draft-free. In the winter, the low stucco ceiling tended to hold the heat generated by a wood-fueled potbelly stove at a uniform temperature, like the lid on a crock pot. A couple of worn Navajo rugs brightened the dark-stained oak floor. A chandelier
of deer antlers provided dim light in the living room. One wall bristled with books, stacked on unfinished three-quarter-inch pine planks balanced floor to ceiling on cement blocks positioned at the ends of the eight-foot lengths. The shelves were long enough to hammock in the middle with the weight of all those words. The furniture wasn’t much better than what you’d see in a fraternity. There was a dining room table, and a counter with two stools that offered a glimpse into the small, functional kitchen. A hall led to two bedrooms with a bathroom between.

  Trooper Heston stopped to scratch Bobby Long’s arthritic, twelve-year-old Jack Russell Terrier, Ruby Gallatin. Ruby G., as she was known, came with the last girlfriend to share the home, Paula. Ruby G. stayed when Paula left four years ago, after Bob refused to give her a ring and a commitment, citing something he had read once and believed, that second marriages were the triumph of hope over experience. Bobby’s first wife, Mary Ann, died of ovarian cancer seven years into their marriage. Bobby loved her with all his heart; her passing left him with a sadness as deep as marrow.

  Paula, who was a little drunk that particular night, explained to the lieutenant that what she was asking for—after four years—was nonnegotiable. Which is to say, an ultimatum. The lieutenant thought that over for about ten seconds, cocking his head one way, then another, before walking to the front door and opening it. Paula burned with chagrin, finished her glass of jug wine and flung the glass in his direction. It missed its target and smashed against the wall, leaving a smear of pinot noir on the white chinking. Paula marched toward the door with as much dignity as the situation allowed. “You are such an asshole,” she said to the lieutenant. Then she added, in a decided slur, “Keep the fucking dog.”

  She walked out, climbed into her ten-year-old Toyota pickup truck and drove away into a late-spring snowfall mixed with sleet. The lieutenant was unfazed by the sudden onset of dog ownership. Ruby G., it turns out, had belonged to Paula’s son Jason, who had left it with her when he went off to college. He had acquired the dog after a game of beer pong. Bobby Long figured it was a kind of pay-it-forward canine, one whose days were more likely bounded by health than by the prospect of another owner. Truth be told, he was partial to the low-maintenance pooch and particularly liked the fact they both walked kind of funny. A doggie door he sawed out of the front door allowed her to relieve herself as needed. A bowl of water, a stove pot of kibbles, and the odd steak bone were her only demands. On more than one occasion, the lieutenant had confessed to Ruby G. that he wished more women could be like her (though he didn’t share that thought with anyone he fancied, being reasonably sure it might be an impediment to romantic aspiration).

  Bobby Long, at fifty-nine, had hit a turnout in the highway of life. Except for work, he was happily parked beyond the hustle and bustle of living. He shaved when he felt like it. Left dishes in the sink for days. Liked to put his feet up and drink wine while staring into the coals in his potbelly stove. Women came and went, or didn’t. He could have maintained this familiar middle-age, single-male glide pattern for years if it weren’t for William Deakens Perkins. Deke reentered his life like a microblast of weather—slamming the front door open, filling the house with a damp, ominous chill. Melodrama was something foreign to the lieutenant, yet in his heart Bobby Long knew he was headed for a showdown with Deke. Man to man. Somewhere. Somehow. The universe called out for it. His certainty in its inevitability calmed him to the events sure to pass before then. It gave him the opposite of anxiety—he believed there would be light at the end of the tunnel.

  When the lieutenant left him to change, Trooper Heston stepped up to the cluster of photographs on the dining room wall. He saw his boss in his rodeo days, staying on a bucking bronco, holding a Best-All-Around Cowboy belt. He stared at his first wife, Mary Ann, in full, youthful bloom, a cloud of honey curls, come-hither twinkle in her eyes, blue jeans snug to flesh. He smiled to see the bride and groom on their wedding day, she in a white cowgirl getup and red cowboy boots, Navajo silver bracelets, and a sparkling choker, the lieutenant wearing blue jeans and a brown leather vest over an embroidered white cowboy shirt and bolo tie. The apparent best man stood beside Mary Ann and the maid of honor beside Long, completing the nuptial foursome. Billy stared at the maid of honor for a moment; she looked familiar. The light in the living room was bad, so he lifted the photo off its single nail anchor and held it in the brighter overhead light above the pass-through counter. He stared hard at the bridesmaid and he knew: Mary Walsh, twenty years younger, but the spitting image of the woman whose picture lay on his office desk, her neck broken, her lipstick smeared.

  18

  The rafts were packed and readied at the water’s edge. Tom sat in the back of one, with Gail at the oars. Roarke waited patiently onshore. Deke held the .22 while Terry checked the lashings. When he was done, Deke handed him two lengths of rope. “Tie ’em in. Don’t want anyone going for any swims without askin’.”

  Terry tied Gail and Tom by their ankles to the D rings inside the raft. Gail managed a brave face for Roarke, who cowered behind Deke. “Honey, you okay?”

  “Why can’t I go with you?”

  “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “What about Maggie? She’s a city dog.”

  “A city dog, yes … but a dog dog down deep. She’ll figure out how to stay alive. I bet she gets picked up by another boat. Just do what they tell you, okay? We’re just busing them to the bottom of the river, isn’t that right, Deke?”

  “That’s how I see it.”

  Tom aimed a finger and a hard eye at Deke. “He’s just a boy, Deke.”

  “Luckily not just any old boy, but your boy … which makes him special to all of us, if you know what I mean.”

  Deke grabbed Roarke by the back of his belt and swung him off the ground like a laundry sack. Roarke squealed.

  “My group this way,” Deke said.

  “Pops!” Roarke pleaded.

  Tom popped right up in the boat. “Get your goddamn hands off him!”

  When he lunged toward Deke, his ankle tether jerked him back … making him tumble awkwardly.

  Deke released his grasp on Roarke, dropping the boy onto the beach sand. “Okay.” He stuck the .22 in the back of his jeans and pulled out his knife. Roarke picked up a handful of sand and threw it at the convict. “Moron!” he shouted.

  Deke shielded his eyes with a forearm, then roughly grabbed Roarke by the scruff of his neck and swung him kicking and screaming into his raft.

  “Leave him alone!” Gail yelled. Her lips were trembling.

  Deke shot Gail a sarcastic look as he marched past her and advanced on Tom with his knife. He flicked the knife inches from Tom’s face, “You gotta understand something, Pop. Or is it Pops … as your boy calls you? There seems to be only one of you, so I’ll call you Pop, which you should know is actually one too many since you’re excess baggage on this trip.”

  Gail struggled against her ropes. Tom stared past the knife blade at Deke’s leering face.

  “He’s thirteen years old.”

  “So you want me to pick on somebody else?” Deke asked. “How about her?” pointing to Gail.

  “You’re really sick,” Tom told him.

  Deke looked away. His knife-free hand lashed through the air and slapped Tom’s face with a stinging whack.

  Deke leaned close, “Feel better, now?”

  Tom blinked back tears. “You’re something with a knife in your hand and a tied-up opponent.”

  Gail swung her gaze to Tom. “Tom … don’t. He’s what you said … sick.”

  Deke grinned at Gail, mockingly pressed his hand to his forehead as if to take his temperature. He touched the tip of the knife to Tom’s chin, forcing him back, back, then struck the blade down, slicing his restraining rope.

  He wheeled and flung the knife at a log on the beach, thwuck, it stuck in, blade first. “You want a piece of me?”

  Tom measured his gusto for an actual fight.

  “Put the hurt on
him, Pop,” Roarke said.

  Deke mocked him: ”C’mon, Pop … show the kid what you’re made of.”

  “Don’t Tom,” Gail said. “He’s a killer.”

  Tom had second thoughts, the logical recalibration of a civilized man. He looked at Roarke, hoping for nonviolent support.

  “Guess we know who wears the pants in this family,” Deke said mockingly.

  Deke shrugged, and turned to get his knife. Tom launched himself out of the boat, his momentum knocking Deke to the ground. They tumbled over and over in the sand, until Deke was able to push him off.

  Roarke stood and pumped a fist from his raft. “Kick his ass!”

  Terry sat down nonchalantly on the bow of the raft to watch.

  Tom and Deke scrambled to their feet and began circling one another—Tom assuming a clumsy, old school boxing stance. Deke stood cockily, his arms to his side, Muhammad Ali–style, turning one way, then the other, feinting a jab with one arm, then the other, shuffling his feet. He was playing with Tom, who ducked back from the purposely short blows. Deke looked at Terry and grinned. Terry shrugged. Then Deke stepped forward and flicked another jab that landed on Tom’s face. Tom threw up both hands, as if chasing away a bee. Deke shuffled in and rocked him with a jab from his other hand. Tom stumbled awkwardly. Then he crouched warily, telegraphing his thinking the way nonfighters do. He charged Deke, who sidestepped him easily and drilled Tom with an uppercut to the gut.

  Tom sank to his knees and grabbed his stomach, wheezing and gagging. When he rose up, a little woozy, Deke stepped forward and launched another uppercut. This one caught Tom flush under the chin. His head snapped back. His teeth bit his lip. Tom staggered backward, bleeding, struggling to catch his breath. He sank to his knees.

  Gail rose up in the raft and tugged on her restraining rope. “No more!”

  Tom pushed himself to his feet. One eye was beginning to swell up. Blood trickled from his lip and nose. His breathing was raspy. He faked a lunge, then charged Deke again, head down. This time Deke grabbed his shoulders and drove a knee into Tom’s face. The thud was awful. Tom yelled and fell face down in the sand. He lay still for a moment, panting, his hands kind of twitching at his sides.